Its mission: to study transistors the size of a single atom and figure out a way to produce them cheaply.

"The most exciting part is this," said Postma, a 34-year-old native of the Netherlands, opening the door into his "clean room," where students don sterile white suits to work with matter a billionth of a meter thick.

"The idea is, if you want to make things really small, you don't want them to be blocked by hair, skin, dust or dirt."

The basement lab - the most expensive single lab on campus - is actually the second Department of Science and Math nanotech lab.

Twenty years ago, CSUN professor Nick Kioussis started nanotech studies from scratch and went on to secure $10 million in grants for basic and applied research.